The namesake plot summary. The Namesake (2006) 2022-10-12
The namesake plot summary
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The Namesake is a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri that tells the story of a Bengali-American family living in the United States. The novel follows the life of Gogol Ganguli, the son of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, who immigrate to the United States from Calcutta, India.
Gogol is named after the Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol, whom his father greatly admires. However, Gogol grows up feeling disconnected from his name and his cultural heritage, struggling to find his place in the world as a first-generation immigrant. He resists his parents' attempts to teach him Bengali and traditional Indian customs, and instead embraces American culture and values.
As Gogol grows older, he becomes more interested in his family's history and begins to understand the significance of his name. He learns about the tragic circumstances under which his father was given the name Gogol, and how it has shaped his family's identity.
Despite this newfound understanding, Gogol continues to struggle with his identity, feeling torn between his Indian heritage and his American upbringing. He ultimately decides to change his name to Nikhil, a more traditionally Bengali name, in an effort to embrace his cultural roots.
Throughout the novel, Lahiri explores themes of cultural identity, immigration, and the complexities of family relationships. The Namesake is a powerful and poignant tale that resonates with readers from all cultural backgrounds.
The Namesake Summary
The principal, like Mr. Children play together or watch T. Ashoke calls Ashima one night and tells her he has been admitted to the hospital for a minor stomach ailment. The Gangulis move to a Boston suburb, a university town where Ashoke has found a job teaching electrical engineering. She went to Brown, and though her parents wanted her to find a lucrative career, like medicine, she fell in love with literature.
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The Namesake: Key Facts
Gogol moves into their house, which becomes almost a replacement for his own home. After lunch, it begins to rain and becomes cold, and Gogol notices that Moushumi has prepared herself with an umbrella. The friend is Moushumi, the girl with the English accent who used to read at Ganguli family parties, years ago. His English teacher in high school talks about his namesake, Nikolai Gogol, and Gogol is mortified because the author Gogol had such a depressing life. His father has to travel to teach at a university in Ohio for six months.
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"NCIS" The Namesake (TV Episode 2012)
The letter never arrives, and soon after, the grandmother dies. In some ways this suburban town is even more foreign to the Gangulis, as it is less multicultural than Boston. The next year, the Gangulis decide to go to Calcutta for eight months while Ashoke is up for sabbatical at the university. The move is difficult for Ashima, partly because she leaves her friends in Cambridge for a neighborhood where people don't really speak with one another often. They marvel that, despite knowing each other as children and promising themselves not to get involved with Bengalis, they have found each other in New York. Struck by the tragedy of this loss, Gogol returns to his family, finding comfort in the Bengali traditions he had once rebelled against.
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The Namesake
Gogol was unaware of the story until this point. When Ashoke Ganguli survives a catastrophic train accident in India thanks to a book of short stories written by Nikolai Gogol, he decides to move to America. Soon after this period is over, Maxine and Gogol break up. It goes easier than it might have, because this is a marriage that was arranged between the right two people, and their respect and regard and eventually deep love only grow. But Maxine impulsively kisses his parents on their cheeks, and the earth does not move.
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The Namesake Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis
Gogol has learned by now how to eat properly with his hands, but does not want to eat without his mother. The synopsis below may give away important plot points. Gogol knows of the woman from his own childhood. Ashima's marriage is an arranged one and therefore is lacking in the strong emotions of an American marriage, leaving Ashima feeling isolated when she goes into labor. We watch Gogol grow up American with roots he only begins to appreciate when he visits India in his 20s. Gogol Kal Penn grows up as a typical American teenager and, inspired by a family trip to the Taj Mahal in India, studies to become an architect.
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The Namesake Plot Summary
. Her first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize. Gogol feels an attachment to these Puritans, the first immigrants to America, and their odd names. Ashoke has been set on traveling abroad ever since a terrible train accident a few years previous, which he barely survived. Gogol treats, and they part with Moushumi telling Gogol to call her again some time. As Gogol progresses through high school, he resents his name more and more for its oddness and the strange genius he was named for. Gogol takes her home to meet his parents, and he is invited by her parents to spend time at their vacation home in New Hampshire.
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Nikhil develops a love for architecture, and after graduating from Yale, he attends design school at Columbia, then lives uptown and works for a firm in Manhattan. Their trip is shrouded in mourning. The novel offers no easy answers about romance, only a discussion of the possible outcomes of each approach. In Calcutta, it is traditional for a new baby to be called by a nickname until a good name can be chosen. Gogol breaks off the relationship and begins to spend more time with his mother and sister, Sonia.
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The Namesake Study Guide
Most of them have now moved into homes in the suburbs like the Gangulis. The food, the cold weather, a crammed flat in the middle of a big city where Ashima can't meet her neighbors, the language. Moushumi likes spending time with her artistic, Brooklyn friends, whereas Gogol finds them frustrating and selfish. Gogol then marries a fellow Bengali American named Moushumi. Within a year, Gogol is married to this girl, settling down to make a life. Certainly, Gogol and Moushumi understand something of Bengali-American life, from growing up in that community in New England. Ashoke and Ashima want him to use the "good name" Nikhil.
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The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri Plot Summary
The second time they travel to India is when Gogol and Sonia are in their late teens, and after a memorable visit to Kolkata and then to the Taj Mahal, they return home. However, as Gogol grows older, he comes to appreciate what his parents went through when moving to this country and how hard it was for them to adapt to their adopted country. Kim says that she gave the pistol to Kris, her brother, who says that someone stole it from the trunk of his car, and who later identifies a motorcycle and a rider. For Sonia and Gogol, on the other hand, America is much more familiar and present for them than the Bengali world in which their parents grew up. During his college years, he smokes cigarettes and marijuana, goes to many parties, and loses his virginity to a girl he cannot remember. Increasingly, to an outside observer, there is little difference between the Gangulis and their neighbors. He lives in a very small apartment in New York City, where he has landed a job in an established architectural office after graduating from Columbia.
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The Namesake Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis
Ashoke takes a visiting professorship outside Cleveland and moves there for the academic year. The family then buy their own house in the suburbs and travel to India for the first time after their marriage. That September, of 1973, Gogol is driven to kindergarten for the first time by his father. Buy Study Guide The year is 1968, and Their baby boy is born in the morning. However, the school principal becomes aware of Gogol's reluctance to respond to this name and refuses to allow him to be addressed by any name other than his legal name, Gogol.
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